Chick-fil-A’s Arrival Sparks Moral Concerns

America’s favorite homophobic chicken restaurant is opening a location on campus. Chick-fil-A is scheduled to open during the spring 2024 semester, but its arrival threatens the fragile relationship between the LGBTQIA+ students and an administration that is obligated to protect them. 

From athletic brands to soda pop, corporations have long partnered up with college campuses to mutually profit at the expense of a student's wallet. However, in this case, another expense to be collected is a student’s morals. What organizations choose to do with their money influences the moral impact those organizations will have on the locations they settle in. 

Chick-fil-A is best known for three things: its juicy chicken sandwiches, its employees’ chipper attitudes and its long history of donating to anti-LGBTQIA+ charities. However, in 2019, Chick-fil-A stated that it ceased donating to both the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes — both organizations that have a history of spreading anti-LGBTQIA rhetoric — according to the New York Times. 

However, another controversy soon swallowed the organization. The ex-chairman of Chick-fil-A who oversaw the policy change in 2019, Dan Cathy, was revealed in 2021 to have been donating to the National Christian Charitable Foundation personally, which publically lobbied against LGBTQIA+ federal protections. In 2021, Cathy’s son Andrew Cathy became the CEO of Chick-fil-A. Whether he will follow in his father’s footsteps is still up in the air. 

However, the past stays as a grim reminder of what Chick-fil-A stood for and they have not yet begun the path to redeem themselves in the eyes of the LGBTQIA+ community.

The basic needs of the MSU community never included a Chick-fil-A. Before restaurants began being put into the Strand Union Building (SUB), we were all eating fine. Rendezvous and Miller dining halls have been serving food of both quality and quantity for a long time. The all-you-can-eat buffet style dining complexes have a peak price of fifteen dollars for dinner and this price is pretty fair given that not even I can make a prime rib on a fifteen dollar budget. 

If a college campus already has two established dining halls, why add controversial fast food restaurants into the mix? These chain restaurants and MSU know students will pay when the convenience of location is the main attraction. Many students do not have meal plans and it is important for them to have quick access to food around and within campus. However, implementing chains like Chick-fil-A does nothing to help the image of the university or improve local culture in Bozeman. 

 Chick-fil-A, with all its past financial choices, should be the last business you want on campus after the anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric which was present before the QSA drag show in Feb. 2023. Less than a year after the MSU community let the university know the importance of LGBTQIA+ safety and rights, the university is bringing a Chick-fil-A to campus. 

Chick-fil-A is an organization whose historical ethics have been wholly against the rights of people who are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community, so this issue is not about food variety or limiting the foot traffic through the dining halls. This is a predatory move to sell students something “new” and “convenient” — but there’s nothing new and convenient about homophobic beliefs.

By partnering with organizations like Chick-fil-A, the university is creating a future where sexual orientation and sexuality are further marginalized by entrenching homophobia into institutional partnerships themselves. This joining in particular is another step back which shows how noncommittal MSU is to promoting a culture of belonging and inclusion for all LGBTQIA+ students on campus.

The future of the SUB seems to include inviting unethical businesses to exploit young adults which will pull customers away from local businesses and drive future LGBTQIA+ students away from the university. Personally, this partnership only shows me that MSU is way past working to heal the wounds of our past experiences.